


Steering a Passage, Finding a Line

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Punk, Busking, F/M, Fluff, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 23:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: Clara Oswald plays folk, John Smith plays whatever, together they go on what could technically be called a tour.





	Steering a Passage, Finding a Line

 

Clara is broke. Flat broke. Owing-money-for-not-having-any-money-in-her-bank-account broke. A flurry of job applications are landing in the inbox of the hiring managers for places she’d like to work and places she could work and places she might be able to fake her way into at least one pay-cheque, and places she doesn’t want to work at but needs must. No money coming in before bills are due, though, even in case of a miracle.

So, she takes the acoustic guitar she bought on a whim two years ago and all ten popular songs she’d bothered to learn, and her winning smile and determination. And she takes a deep breath, and she leaves her flat, purse pulled tight around her shoulders. Into town.

She picks a spot on a street corner in one of the more touristy areas, across from a man painted silver very slowly giving the world a thumbs-up. She sets her guitar case down on the ground, pulls the slightly out of tune thing out, leans against the wall, and starts playing “In My Life.” And then “Wonderwall”. And then “In My Life” again, because those are the only two crowd-pleasing songs she knows how to play. Foot traffic is moving fast enough, no one seems to notice the limited repertoire. Some coins in her guitar case, a few people stopping and listening before drifting away again.

“You know the Beatles killed rock and roll, yeah?” says Someone.

She stops. Everyone in this crowd is done with “In My Life”, anyway. The mid-day sun is bright, an uncharacteristically clear day, and all she can see is a silhouette. Tall, narrow, big hair. Scottish and male by the sound of it, and the latter makes her tense up.

“Bad alt-rock killed rock and roll. Don’t drag pop music into this.” She’s holding her guitar like maybe she could use it as a weapon.

The silhouette laughs, and steps into the shadow of the awning. Man-shaped, sure; older and dusty and ragged around the edges.

He smiles, kind of disarmingly, kind of terrifyingly, before bending down and placing a pound coin carefully in her guitar case, left open on the pavement.

“D'you take requests?”

She narrows her eyes, cradles the guitar protectively. “The only other songs I know how to play are, uh. I can do "Too Drunk to Fuck” and “Train in Vain”. Some other stuff. And my own songs, which are never a crowd-pleaser.“

He laughs, a raspy kind of awkward thing, like he doesn’t laugh a lot, or make any noises at all much. "How much for "Too Drunk to Fuck”?“

Staring him down, she stands more solidly on the ground, strumming the first chord out lightly. "Five pounds,” she says.

Laughing again, like he’s enjoying the opportunity. “Didn’t need to eat today, anyway,” he says. He digs in his pockets, which seem to go in deeper than his coat will allow, and comes up with a fistful of change. Counts five pounds off.

She plays the song. And she watches him. He’s not - like not how people are sometimes, thinking they own you, have a right to you, can do whatever to you because they have wealth and power and you’re broke begging on a corner. It’s not weird. It just is. He applauds when she finishes. No one else in the mid-day flow of strangers notices or stops.

“So,” he says. “Haven’t seen you around here. I am new-ish to the area, though.”

“Haven’t done this in a while. Thought it might be nice to get out, play some music. Beautiful day for it.”

He’s staring her down. She’s not flinching.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

Oh, wait, maybe this is weird. “I’m not - going on a date with you. Or whatever. Like I’m not gonna - ”

“No, no, no - ” He’s waving his hands around, a mortified look on his face. “No, I mean, I’ve got some protein bars, and I know a place where we can get a hot meal, if you need - ”

“I’m not homeless,” she insists. Not yet, not quite.

“Maybe. But aside from students, no one does this when they aren’t worried about the basics of survival.” No stranger has the right to look this kind, this genuine.

And maybe she considers it. But she won’t, she can’t, for a wide variety of reasons. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, steps back out into the sun. “If you do just like to play music. I’m doing a - not a gig, exactly, but there’s a thing at a place - free punch and pie, by the way - and it’s open to anyone willing to stand in front of a microphone.” He extricates his hands, now holding a pen and scrap of paper, and he scribbles something down. Half-hesitates, like he’s second-guessing himself, and then shoves it towards her.

She takes it. He nods, she nods. She starts playing “Train in Vain” as he walks away.

 

* * *

It’s a whole other town, where this is happening. She leaves her flat like she doesn’t especially need to come back to it, with a duffel bag and her purse and guitar, and she takes a train.

Like shucking everything off, watching the world rush past outside the window. The debt and history and all of it suddenly just things she could leave behind. Why not ignore your responsibilities? What’s the worst that could happen?

She steps out of the train car and breathes in air that is almost, almost different enough to feel right in her lungs.

 

* * *

In addition to the ten popular songs she can play, she has maybe twenty songs she wrote herself. Up on Bandcamp, a handful of people have even paid money for them. They’re not all the things she wanted them to be, but she does have them. Some of them are not bad. She takes those twenty songs and her guitar and mace into a slightly sketchy neighborhood. Nothing she’s not used to, but enough she’s bracing for a fight, or to run.

Address, date, smiley face. Sincerely, John Smith. Another smiley face. The note is sitting crumpled in her purse.

Been a while since she did a show. She stares up at the building. Community center, square and bland. Music coming from inside. Kids drifting around outside. Doesn’t seem quite her scene, but she barges in anyway.

A lot of the young people, here. All sorts, tending towards the scrappy and the colored-hair patched-jacket thing, and she’s come this far, but she does feel out of place, in her nice if well-worn sundress. Fuck it, she’s Clara Oswald. She presses through the cluster of people by the door.

On the sort-of stage, there he is. Her ticket into this. John Smith, or whatever, and in this flat lighting she’s seeing him now in a non-mysterious and unflattering way. Still, all told, not bad: she’s always had a thing for middle-aged men with dramatic noses.

(Not that it’s important, really, but she’s been single for a while and while she’s okay being single, she does freely enjoy people who are enjoyable. John Smith is enjoyable, in his way.)

He’s fiddling with a fire-hazard looking synthesizer, or at least she assumes it’s a synth, this cobbled-together assemblage of wires and knobs and handwritten labels. Plugged in, amp turned up, an unearthly drone coming out of the speakers, his hands deftly adjusting the dials until the noise settles where he wants it. Cheap Yamaha guitar slung around his hips. He’s shoving around pedals, setting up samplers - got a hell of a lot of kit, for a maybe-hobo. More fiddling, and harrumphing, and that drone throughout, the crowd (such as it is) getting antsy.

And then. Then he starts playing the shit out of his guitar. Hunched over, sunglasses on, left hand precise on the fret. Math-y, sort of, but not precious. An aching, haunted tone, minor key. He’s been recording - a quick jab to the sampler and the last ten notes are repeating, filling this shitty cheap room, filling her head, and she kinda…zones out. In a good way.

She comes up to him once he’s done. He’s somehow much smaller than he was while playing, just a string bean of a normal human being.

Doesn’t wait to catch his eye. “That was. Different.”

“Is that code for ‘bad’?” He’s shoving his bits and bobs into a rucksack that doesn’t quite look up to the task.

“If I want to say something, I say it. Did I say it was bad?”

He looks like maybe he wants to smile. He doesn’t smile. He turns his head away as she clutches her guitar to her chest and walks past him to the stage.

She’s got funny songs, sad songs, songs about the city and the country and the stars at night. Songs about being self-sufficient and songs about being lonely because you’re so self-sufficient and songs about the wind in her hair in a beaten-down car doing 70 on an empty highway. Songs about love and loss and freedom. She plays some of them. She catches John’s eye, on a line about a one-night-stand in a communal house, the painting of an alien landscape tacked up on the wall that she’d stared at. It’s a good line. He blushes, a little.

Songs about cheap whiskey and trains and the stars at night. Short songs - she’s never been good at commitment - and mostly fast songs and some sing-a-long parts, because people like those. There’s a kid in the corner who somehow knows all the words already, but for the rest, it doesn’t take much, just a repeated line and a gesture. _Sing with me._

Small gigs like this she makes a point to connect to everyone in the audience. This is a conversation, a connection between individuals. Between all of them as a community. But her gaze keeps going back to John. Huddled awkwardly on an upturned milkcrate, staring up at her with wide eyes. Rapt. He’s into it, and she’s into the fact that he’s into it, and after a few minutes of furtive glances and blushing she’s forced to admit that she’s more-than-abstractly into him.

She finishes her set with a song about leaving home. To be fair, most of her songs are about leaving home. This is the one she always pours her whole heart into, lets her voice crack and her foot stomp, the pace and energy building, playing harder and faster and louder. Eyes shut, her guitar a part of her, the conversation forgotten because this is just her, now, and this stranger.

And then there’s silence, and enthusiastic if sparse applause (only so much noise forty people can make, after all), and she’s absently, mechanically putting her guitar back in its case, pulling out her merch onto the provided table,  cassette tapes and CD-R demos, silkscreened patches. She sells some things, more than she usually does, not enough to fix her motorcycle but, hey, enough to eat tonight. She’s about to close the bag back up when a shadow falls over her. John, and she’s not surprised.

He’s not looking at her anymore, looking at the ground instead, a point just to the left of her face, the sparse crowd milling about. “How much for the tape? And the CD. And, uh, the dragon patch.”

She lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “Five pounds, three pounds, one pound fifty. Respectively. Nine-fifty altogether.”

He smiles tightly and fishes a crumpled tenner from his trouser pocket. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeats. She takes the money and gives him the tape, the CD, the patch, 50p change. They don’t quite make physical contact.

Normally after a money-for-goods transaction the person buying the goods leaves. John does not leave. John hovers, furrowing and unfurrowing his brow. She smiles blandly up at him, well aware that something’s about to happen. This is gonna be one of those hinge points, she can feel it.

“I’m going to Manchester,” he says finally, worrying at his hoodie’s drawstring. “Driving up there tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to go to Manchester?”

She doesn’t particularly want to go to Manchester. But it’s somewhere else, at least. “Why not,” she says. “You only live once.”

 

 

* * *

The show in Manchester is a bit of a mis-booking, for them both.

The room pretty much empties during both of their sets, the sad sound of a single person clapping out of pity. They don’t hang around, no sense setting up at the merch table, no sense staying in this town at all. They get back in the car and he says, with a slightly manic look,

_I’m going to Liverpool next._

and she thinks about her flat and her life and the two Beatles song she knows how to play and all her everything and then she forcibly jettisons those things from her mind and says,

_Mind if I come along?_

* * *

John’s car is a welded-together mess of several different automobile bodies holding a mostly-functional engine. Decent paint job, though that doesn’t stop them from breaking down twice along the way.

They grab coffee at the first available Costa, spare change dug out from the seat cushions. She takes advantage of the free wifi and emails local promoters while he fills his cup with sugar, and then more sugar, and then she realizes she’s just staring at his hands as they rip the packets open.

She realizes he knows she’s staring. She stares anyway. She looks up, and his eyes are boring into her, wide and wild. Eyebrow cocked. He rips open another packet of sugar. She puts her phone down.

“So,” she says, as he’s saying _I’ve been thinking about robbing a bank._ There’s an awkward pause. Another sugar. Then she’s standing up and leaning over the table, and she’s grabbing his face in her hands, and she’s kissing him.

“Not a big fan of the,” he says, when she pulls back. He waves his hand at her, as if to say _romantic activity with women_ or _romantic activity in general_ and, oh, she’s fucked this up.

“I am so, so sorry.” She bites her lip. Regroup, Oswald.

“In public, I mean.” He smiles, a strange scrunched-up thing, then reaches over to pat her hand gingerly.

Her thought process grinds to a halt. He’s drinking his brown sugar-water nonchalantly. She’s doing mental calculations, trying to figure out if they could both fit comfortably in the back of the car.

(Turns out they can’t, not with all his crap jammed in, but she manages a half-decent blowjob and he very nearly gets his hand down her trousers before she’s poked in the eye by a music stand and the moment is lost. How much again for a hotel room? And what’s your position on outdoors-but-secluded sex?)

 

* * *

They find a gig and someone involved with a spare bedroom, and she says, to the Someone With A Room,

_My name is Clara and this is my…man, friend, and we’ve been on the road for a while so we’d be interested in trading some chores for room and board, if you’re interested._

It’s a house in the middle of exurb nowhere. She’s washing the dishes, he’s watching her. Thanks for nothing.

Sitting at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug with a broken-off handle, he says: “Man friend.”

“Boyfriend didn’t feel right. Sorry. Not yet, I’m just - ”

“Not that part, I mean, whatever we are, we are, I’m more than happy, doesn’t matter. Just.”

“Yeah?”

“The whole. 'Man’ thing. Never been incredibly comfortable with that. If we’re gonna be, right, doing this thing-” John gestures between the two of them. “You should know that.”

“Joanne, then?”

John laughs, not dismissive but a ‘you don’t know the half of it’ thing, stands up and meanders towards the sink, starting to dry off the dishes. “John’s fine. Just - dunno.”

“Not a 'he’ so much,” she says.

“Maybe.” Drying very thoroughly a beige Ikea bowl.

She leans over, takes the bowl and towel from his - their hands, and kisses them. He - they - taste like the spaghetti from earlier, and presumably so does she, and the two of them make out with their tomato-sauce breath against the kitchen counter top in a stranger’s house in a town not nearly far away enough from home.

 

* * *

Time enough has passed that maybe they’re actually doing this. Not a weekend jaunt, just leaving for real. She hasn’t paid any bills in two months. She sleeps with her…whatever-friend in the backseat of their shit car, and sometimes on the couches of friendly strangers, and they play Black Flag covers on street corners for spare change.

John’s too old for this. Hell, _she’s_ too old for this, and she’s only 28. This isn’t the sort of life that allows aging gracefully. The friends that she’d had, they’d all settled down. She assumes, at least, considering where she’d left them. She knows for sure of a few. The rest, especially all the friends like her, everyone she met on the road, she could check Facebook, or those websites people set up, the memorials. The lists of the dead or the missing. But she doesn’t. She can’t. Schrodinger’s emotional consequences: what she refuses to confront can’t hurt her.

 

* * *

The car breaks down outside Inverness and maybe she should call it here, just stay and get a job, be a waitress or a cashier or whatever, but John gets that wild look again and the next thing she knows, she’s throwing a blanket over a barbed-wire fence and helping them over.

The two of them wait, huddled behind bushes, as the train rolls in. John knows which car to get, and they help her up, a hand outstretched and beckoning.


End file.
